


Blossom

by CherFleur



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Fic Exchange, Force-Sensitive Chirrut Îmwe, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Melancholy, Multi, i guess, sorry if this is not what you meant lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23061337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: If gathered correctly, one could turn the petals adrift on the wind back into the flower they came from.If careful, even if some pieces were missing, it would still hold its shape.Grasp them gently, but be firm in keeping hold so that none slip out of your hands; these were his people, after all, and it wouldn't do for any of them to get lost on the journey home.
Relationships: Chirrut Imwe & Jedha, Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Chirrute Îmwe & Rogue One
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	Blossom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sendryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sendryl/gifts).



> Star Wars fic exchange from Kat's discord server that was a 30 minute timed write. Talk about stress, but I did this to myself, lol.
> 
> The overall theme was Growth, but I'm not sure if I encapsulated that the way I wanted to, so, yeah.
> 
> Name: Briar  
> Pick a Starwar: Rogue One  
> Pick a Character: Chirrut Imwe  
> Keyword: Blossom  
> Fave Drink: Dr. Pepper  
> NSFW OK Y/N: Yes (no pressure)
> 
> Please let me know if you see any glaring errors. I did a quick sweep for typos and stuff, but not much else. Enjoy!

When the walls of the Temple had been high, Chirrut used to stand at the tallest points to taste the wind.

Spices and sounds were carried up, up into the air to him, the making of lives well lived, and he’d reveled in it. During Holy Days, the Temple children would run around with handfuls of flower petals from the gardens, allowed to pick which flowers they wished to use only on those special days. They would fly high up into the air and Chirrut used to try and catch as many as he could and return them to the children in a game, telling them that they dropped something.

It would tinge everything with the haze of floral texture that was so very invigorating for the static of Jedha, and he had loved it.

Baze, of course, had fretted endlessly about him falling, calling him a “Silly stubborn fool” and holding his hands tightly in his own when he came down. His large friend himself was not terribly fond of heights, experienced a little too much vertigo the higher he went even if he could stubborn his way through it. Chirrut in turn could not help but laugh at the claims and would press a kiss to those hands holding his own, because he knew that it would not be a _fall_ that killed him. Not here, not now.

Not on Jedha, their home.

The air of their beloved planet was light and dry, cold and cutting in harsh weather, flavored only by the touch of those who lived there. The ground was more clay and packed dirt than loose soil or sand, no matter the petals and grit stomped into the stones. Steps echoed in the narrow streets of the city, bouncing off the walls in endless cadence, and chanting from the Temple was a slow, plodding heartbeat.

The only plant life that grew around them was that of hardy weeds and bushes, the ground cactus that grew in the cracks of canyon walls.

This place, as familiar as his own heartbeat, the blood in his veins and the touch of the sun, would not be where he died. Chirrut had known that since he was a child sipping on fizzy drinks and snacking on stolen sweets that he’d snuck from the Temple kitchens.

No, Chirrut would not die on their home soil.

He knew this for fact while the war with the Separatists had raged around them. He knew this as the Jedi fell and the Empire rose as a terrible successor in their place, a veil of darkness swathing the galaxy.

When Baze begged him to leave Jedha with him, Chirrut knew with certainty that he would die elsewhere. It wasn’t why he refused; it wasn’t why he stayed. It was not fear of his inevitable death that kept him where he was, feet firmly on the ground of his homeland, ensconced in battered walls.

He stayed for the children in the streets who turned to him for stories because there was no one else to tell them, not anymore. For the little hands that would press dried flower petals into his hands because there were no more Holy Days or festivals to throw them for. He stayed for the weeping parents who had no children to hold in their arms, and so dampened his shoulders with their sorrow, seeking strength they no longer knew how to find. He stayed, for if he didn’t, who would bury the dead and bid their souls into the Force?

The Empire?

No, they were the cause of all the death in the first place; mass graves dotted the galaxy, and Jedha was no different. It was simply one that still managed to function with a single lung and the stresses of holding themselves together with so very little. They still struggled to crawl out of the trench that had been dug, that they had been forced down into by the cruelty of war and occupation.

Chirrut did not stay out of fear, he had never done anything out of fear in his entire life.

As with all things he set his mind to, he stayed out of _love_.

It was his greatest strength, and what Baze called his greatest failing; the love he held for all those who came to him with need in their hands and hopes in their hearts.

If the Force had not bid him forward, he would have stayed longer still. Through the end of echoing streets and sweet spices on the breeze into concussive sound and then eternal silence.

But these children, these Rogues, they were bitter and bruised just as those children and childless had been when they’d needed him. Only a little broken, but still so bright with the light of change, of hope that had been rekindled from sodden ashes. These _particular_ children did not need his stories, his shoulder or his shovel, but they needed him all the same.

Jyn might carry the crystal, but each of them had hearts of kyber, if singing a different song.

They needed him, and he would join with the people of Jedha – of his home – within the Force soon enough. They were each of them petals drifting on the wind into his hands, and he was simply helping them find their way back to themselves.

Baze, steady, kind, _beautiful_ Baze, had never understood Chirrut’s desire to stay in a dying city no matter how well they had loved and been loved in it. He also did not understand why his grief was a quieter thing at the destruction of it.

He had known that someday Jedha would die just as well as he’d known he would not die within it.

At the Rebel base he’d considered that it was perhaps _there_ that he would pass on into the Force.

Yet the wind did not taste of salt, sand and metal, of war and bittersweet ends. The ground did not sink softly beneath his feet with loam and loose earth, grit filling his sandals. The foliage had gargantuan trees dotted with vines, not smaller, softer barked things that beaded with salt crystals and sand grains. There was no arrhythmic heartbeat born from the panic of blaster fire and the shuddering eclipse of the warmth of the sun.

The only thing ever right, was that Baze was by his side.

Always together, even apart.

His roots had been dug deep in Jedha’s harsh, barren soil that could only grow kyber with any consistency, but he was adrift now. Waiting.

He’d been waiting for a long time.

It was a tense thing, the waiting, the uncertainty of the known that he had quietly, faithfully awaited for so long. Energy sang in his bones as the Force whispered _not yet, not yet, almost, almost_ in each beat of his old heart that sung in time with a now-dead world. It wouldn’t be long, now, until he met his fate and the wheels continued to turn the cogs of destiny, his part played for the betterment of all.

When Chirrut stepped off that little shuttle, piloted by one of those sad, brilliant children – this one born of Jedha as it once was, a child he’d returned flower petals to – he smiled.

 _Yes,_ he thought, the Force a bittersweet sting of hope and a future he would help build by falling. _On Scarif, I will die._

The waiting was over, and with it, a weight was lifted.

Where the earth was soft, and the trees twined together, roots tangled beneath the sand and loose dirt saturated with dampness and humidity. Where the air was flavored with salt, sand and blood, the texture of war on the wind. Where Baze was always with him and the Force would welcome him home.

Where Jedha would be avenged and a galaxy given the keys to its shackles.

His staff was a comforting, familiar weight in his hands, the texture softened by use and the oils from his hands, the kyber core singing of strength and determination, of love.

They would do this thing, this one _great_ thing, and then their journey would be carved entirely anew. Chirrut would gather them all up into his hands, his lost petals, and he would guide them into the Force as he’d done for so many fallen on Jedha. For how little time he’d had with his Rogues, he loved them all the same as he’d loved the peoples of Jedha that had made it what it was.

Time was a silly thing, and Chirrut was a fool; everything would work itself out.

“I am One with the Force, and the Force is with me.”


End file.
